


and i've been sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool

by planetcleer



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: F/M, Fake AH Crew, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, accidentally forgot to tag that oops, additional characters later on, at least in the beginning, implications and references may actually be written in eventually, this will not be a happy story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5228690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planetcleer/pseuds/planetcleer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twenty-one, Gavin is second only to the Mad Mercenary in pure, unadulterated ruthlessness. Some call it sadism, others sociopathy, but he's only ever called it fun. Geoff, leader of the Fake AH Crew and top mob boss in all of Los Santos, just wants to know what the hell happened to the bright little ten-year-old he used to know, and who the fuck is to blame for it.</p><p>Of course, life is just sweet enough to give Geoff answers in the way of a rival crew rising fast, a fresh-faced, eager detective snooping where she shouldn't, and a body count growing too quickly for them to clean up after.</p><p>Everything is manageable until it isn't anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest with you guys, I have almost no idea where this story is going. We'll see when we get there.
> 
> I've never successfully written anything longer than a one-shot before, also, so, ya know. Hopefully this goes well, and I hope people end up liking it uwu. Thank you for taking the time to check it out.
> 
> As mentioned in the tags, there is implied physical and emotional abuse, drug use, underage sex, and underage drinking in this story, particularly in this first chapter. I plan on keeping it implied for now, but keep in mind that it may change!! I'll be sure to let you guys know if so, but still. Just a warning in case it isn't your thing.

Gavin sits on a curb, his head in his hands and blood soaking through his jeans. The street is empty but the city is still roaring around him--music from bars, yelling from a window overhead, the buzzing of neon signs, a dog barking somewhere nearby. When he raises his head, he struggles to focus on the lights twinkling further into the city, where the skyscrapers rise and taxis honk and the dirt and the grime has more sparkle, is easier to ignore.

Lazy thoughts drift through his mind and he scratches the inside of his arm idly, the blunt of his nails catching on some fresh track marks. He wants to be up there, he thinks, but he knows Joel won’t allow that. Joel doesn’t even let him go down to the convenience store on his own half the time, let alone the other side of the city.

Joel says it isn’t safe over there. He says Gavin has to stay so he can protect him, because Lord knows he can’t take care of himself, and Gavin is too high, too drunk, too fucked out to ever ask why Joel can’t protect him there, too.

(--actually, he does ask, once, but he ends up with a black eye and stitches in his cheek and it only takes a few of the new pills Brandon brought back to forget the entire thing ever even happened and damn, what the bloody hell were they even laced with--)

Gavin blinks and suddenly his back is on the sidewalk, cold seeping in through his button up. It feels dingy, he’s vaguely uncomfortable, but he can just change into a new one whenever he stops being too lazy to get up and go back to the club. 

If the way his fingers are starting to twitch says anything about it, that will surely be soon--if not, at least, so he can take more of whatever that blissful, blissful stuff Joel gave him is--but for now, he’s content with listening to the sounds of the city and staring at the empty sky.

He knows there are stars up there somewhere, but he can’t remember now what they look like.

It’s been a long time.

~

The first time Geoff Ramsey sees Gavin Free, the kid is five years old and somehow the most obnoxiously adorable child the world has ever seen. His Uncle Burnie happens to be Geoff’s best friend and roommate at the time, so it’s inevitable that they meet when the boy comes to visit with his parents.

(Mr. and Mrs. Free don’t need to know the details of their lives, what they go out and do every day. They don’t need to know just how dirty the city is, and how neither Burnie nor Geoff can deny having a hand in the growing crime rate. They don’t need to know anything at all.)

Over the next five or so years, Gavin and his parents visit a couple of times a year. Burnie reveals that he and his sister are the only family the other has left, and that his brother-and-law is just as alone. It’s the only explanation Burnie ever offers, and Geoff is smart enough not to ask for more.

It’s easy to be fond of Gavin, anyway, as much as his endless curiosity and energy sometimes wear Geoff down. The kid is hilarious, bright, silly, and Geoff brags, often, about how he is quite obviously the favorite, though Gavin will never admit to anything one way or the other without being coerced through tickling.

The last time Geoff Ramsey sees Gavin Free, it’s the day after the boy’s tenth birthday and the family promises to visit again soon.

Somewhere along the line, Burnie becomes the CEO of a rising company, Geoff the leader of a rising crew, and Gavin and his parents stop visiting when the murder rate in Los Santos becomes the highest in the country.

~

Eventually, Burnie’s company relocates out of Los Santos, though he stays true to his connections and allies in the city.

Geoff’s crew starts to get bigger, too, and it isn’t long before his is a household name, not in total control but well on his way to it.

~

Gavin stands at the end of a dock, wisps of hair caught by the wind and a blindfold knotted at the back of his skull. Despite himself, he’s shaking, though he isn’t sure if it’s from the cold, from fear, or from the steady beating _ineedineedineedineed_ in his bloodstream. He’s distantly aware of the fact that he’s going to die sober.

He doesn’t like that.

“Shoot him and let’s get going. We’ve got other shit to take care of today.”

His heart clenches at the sound of Joel’s voice, tongue darting out to taste the salt on his cracked, dry lips. It reminds him of lying in bed, cotton in his lungs and bruises forming on his neck and chest and hazy pleasure making his bones heavy. It reminds him of an enchanting bass line and whiskey burning all the way down his throat only to crackle away like embers in the pit of his stomach and hands on the small of his back, on his hips, on his thighs, on his ass. It reminds him of fingers on his spine and smoke curling out of an open mouth into his own and stubble against his collarbone and his head falling back against bricks and the television and the radio and their voices just a hum in the background he could never be bothered enough to focus on and stained flannel sheets and skinned knees and poking ribs and purple veins and dirty receipts and lingering kisses and strong arms and sleep.

Is eighteen years old too young for a broken heart?

Not if eighteen years old isn’t too young to die.

Footsteps trail away from him, back towards proper land, and Gavin thinks that Joel must have finally walked away from him.

After a beat of silence, Brandon’s voice comes from behind him, “I’m sorry, Gav.”

The next few things he registers include: a crack; hot, blooming pain in his shoulder; cold water pulling him down, sucking him in; and then, and then.

Nothing.


	2. Two

Gavin never knew the specifics of what his mother did for a living, but he knew it had something to do with a big company and computers. They own a few very expensive ones, as well as some that she had built herself--and, later, as he gets older, ones he helps her build. For one reason or another, she can’t show him anything involving her actual work, but she teaches him basic coding and programming and he goes from there on his own.

Once, when he’s eleven, Dan and Ben convince him to hack into their school’s website and rewrite everything in massively inappropriate ways. He changes a bunch of the pictures to dicks, as well, and there’s chittering all through school the next couple of days about it. The teachers and administrators are furious. Gavin is smart, though, and he knows how to cover his tracks well enough, so no one else ever finds out that it’s him.

(Gavin suspects that his parents know--there’s no way that his mother, at the very least, doesn’t. She gives him a look across the dinner table the day that an email is sent out to the parents of the students about the fiasco, her eyes shimmering, but he can’t decipher what the look means. Anyway, she never brings it up, and neither does his father, and so neither does he.)

~

Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, Gavin’s parents go out for their sixteenth anniversary and get hit by a drunk driver on the way home. His father dies on impact, neck snapped. His mother, he later reads inside files he shouldn’t have access to, dies later. The airbag breaks her nose and collarbone and one of her arms, and she suffers from a hip fracture and damage to multiple internal organs. Almost all of her ribs on her left side crack or break, some of which puncture her lung. This would have been survivable, maybe, but her body is already bleeding internally and the pressure builds up, eventually collapsing her lung as it fills with blood.

His father feels no pain before he dies. His mother’s pain is excruciating. 

~

The following weeks are spent at his grandmother’s house, with a lot of people Gavin barely knows bringing them casseroles and pies and various chicken dishes. A lot of people say sorry to him, too, and too many old ladies he’s never met hug him and kiss his cheeks, even though they’ve put on far too much perfume and all somehow have on lopsided, bright lipstick.

Dan goes with him to the funeral, holds his hand as they sit beside one another in the pews and again, later, as they watch a young man shovel wet dirt and bugs onto the caskets until the sleek black is covered up. Not once does Gavin cry, as much as he wants to. Instead, that night, he gets into the guest bed down the hall from his nan’s room and sleeps for twenty-one hours.

When he wakes up, there’s a young woman and an older man sitting at his nan’s table, discussing what seems to be very important adult matters. The woman has a briefcase filled with various papers, and says her name is Mrs. Marazzi. Apparently, she’s a lawyer. She’s supposed to help figure out all the finances or something like that. 

The man has kind eyes and bright white teeth, and says his name is Casey. Apparently, he’s with a local fostering agency. He’s supposed to help decide what course of action will be in Gavin’s best interest. 

His nan is crying still, just like she has been since he was brought to her house by the policemen a week ago, and she asks him to sit so they can talk. He sits.

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I just stay with her?” Gavin scratches at a crack in the table, but holds Casey’s gaze as he asks. He isn’t crying, but his head hurts and there’s pressure building behind his eyes that he can’t make go away.

“I’m not well, love,” His grandmother cuts in. She has one hand on her chest, clutching the pendant around her neck, and the other she lays atop Gavin’s. That hand trembles even as Gavin turns his palm up to hold it, thumb running over a prominent vein. This is his mother’s mother which somehow makes everything worse. “You know that. I haven’t got another four years in me, and I won’t have you taking care of me while you should be focusing on school.”

Gavin’s free hand curls into a fist in his lap as his voice rises, “But--But that isn’t fair! Where am I supposed to go?!”

“Well, Gavin, your Uncle Burnie,” Mrs. Marazzi nearly stumbles over the name, nose wrinkling up in mild distaste, and Gavin thinks that he doesn’t really like her much at all, “Offered to take you in.”

But as much as he loved his uncle when he was younger, as much as he misses him now, the suggestion ignites hot anger inside of him. Suddenly, he is far more upset than before, chair skittering back as he stands.

“I absolutely will not go to live with him. I’m not leaving my friends, I’m not moving to America, and I’m not going to live with him.”

“Gavin,” Casey begins, voice delicate likes he’s trying to placate a wild animal, and that only serves to anger Gavin further, “He’s the only realistic option--”

“He wouldn’t even go to his sister’s funeral!” It sits in the air, heavy, and his nan’s breath hitches, “It’s always work with him. We stopped visiting because he got too busy with work to see us, and now he can’t even take any bloody time off of bloody work just to bury his sister and her husband! That’s not a realistic option at all.”

Mrs. Marazzi frowns at him, mouth tight, “Gavin, please lower your voice. Your opinion matters, but you are not the one making the final decision. We asked you what you wanted to do as a courtesy. Your uncle is young, he’s quite financially stable, and he lives in a good city with a good school district--there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go there.”

Though he opens his mouth to say something, his nan is quick to speak before he can, “Your uncle is a good man, Gavin. Your mother loved him very much, and he loved her just the same. He may not be here now, but don’t mistake that for him not caring about her, or about your father, or about me or you.”

Still, Gavin is nothing if not stubborn, “If he wanted to take me, he should have been here. I won’t. I won’t go with him.”

“It’s what your mother would have wanted,” his nan says after a long, tense moment, and it’s over from there.

Casey says it’ll be easier in the end, because if something happens to his grandmother before he graduates, he’ll just be sent to live with Burnie, anyway, given they’re the only two people left alive in his family. It’ll be more difficult when he’s older, he’s told. Harder to adjust. Too much change.

Personally, he thinks this is too much damn change now, but what does his opinion matter? Apparently nothing.

He’s given a week. Most of that time, he spends with Dan, trying to immortalize their friendship even with the knowledge that it might not last. The night before he’s due to fly across the world, leaving his entire life behind, Dan gives him a lumpy friendship bracelet and a small notebook. They tie their bracelets around their wrists and hug for a long time. Gavin promises to wait to open the notebook until he’s on the plane the next morning.

When they pull away, he thinks he sees tears in Dan’s eyes.

~

Gavin, albeit young and stupid, is actually quite intelligent, and quite stubborn, and quite angsty in the way only teenagers can be. Deep down, he knows his anger towards his uncle is misguided, that he’s extremely hurt over the deaths of his parents, that he’s just frustrated and upset about having to lose his best friend and everything that’s familiar to him on top of it all, but again.

Stubborn.

Almost immediately following the purchase of his ticket to San Fierro, he gets out his laptop, the only computer he had been allowed to bring from home, and messes with the flights a bit.

He stashes a one-way ticket to Los Santos in what will be his carry-on and thinks that maybe his mother should have scolded him for hacking, after all.


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly, this chapter is kind of heavy on the dialogue, and dialogue is probably one of the things i struggle most with while writing, so!! i hope it's okay. thank you so much for reading uwu

Gavin’s eyes open. He sees white, and then shapeless colors moving around, and there’s suddenly so much noise, deafening, roaring in his ears. He can’t make out any of it. He closes his eyes again.

That happens a lot.

The first time he opens his eyes for more than five seconds, he wishes he hadn’t. He doesn’t recognize the room he’s in, or the voices outside, or the faint smell of--of something. Chemicals maybe? Bleach? It smells sterile. Clean. He isn’t sure where he is.

His eyes focus on his right arm and the needle nestled in his skin by his elbow. It’s connected to a small tube, but he doesn’t care enough to try figuring out what the tube is, or what it goes to--drugs, fuck, are those drugs? He can’t remember the last time he got any, and the track marks on his arms look old, too old, by a least a couple of days. None of them are fresh, except this one, from this needle, and what is it that he’s getting? Not that he really cares, because he takes stuff all the time without really knowing, but he still doesn’t know where he is or who he’s with and he’s nervous because he can’t remember a lot and this place is strange and it isn’t home and he can’t actually feel his body at all and his mind is still all hazy and there’s some kind of machine nearby that’s screaming suddenly, the beeping intruding on his thoughts, and why can’t he move his other arm? The needle isn’t in that sweet spot in his vein and he wants to move it but his left arm isn’t doing anything he wants and that machine is so damn loud and now there’s some woman in the room and she’s yelling, too, just like the machine and he doesn’t know what she’s doing but he can’t bring himself to care because his vision is swimming now, the edges are throbbing and shaking, and before he knows it, everything is dark again.

That’s the most clear-headed he is for a while after that. 

Sometimes he wakes and feels as if he’s just had a nightmare, his whole body sweaty and warm and shaking. It takes only a few seconds for him to go back to sleep.

Other times he wakes and feels as if his body is on fire. He’s never felt so much pain before, like his insides are boiling and his skin is melting and his teeth are all falling out, and he cries until that woman comes in again and helps him go back to sleep.

Other times, still, he sees things--terrible creatures lurking just outside the window, or the door, or shadows dancing in the dim light, or cockroaches and centipedes and beetles crawling into his mouth, under his skin, or a dark figure he inexplicably knows is here to hurt him creeping up to his bed, though he somehow can’t move or make any noise and just has to lay there and watch. 

Every once and awhile, his mother and father, too, sitting on either side of his bed, in the chairs beside it, standing at the foot of it and smiling at him.

“Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry this happened to you,” His mother murmurs, perched on the mattress beside him and smoothing down his hair. His father stands at this other side, holding his hand. He can’t manage to do anything more than stare at them, eyes glassy, but he hopes they can tell how much he loves them, and how much he really wants them to tell him exactly what happened, what they’re apologizing for.

“It’s been so long… You’ve grown up so much, Gavvy,” His father squeezes his hand and Gavin’s heart aches in a way he hasn’t allowed it to in quite sometime, though he can’t remember why, though he can’t figure out what his father means exactly. How long has it been, and since what? When was the last time his parents saw him?

Out of nowhere, the hand in his hair tightens and pulls. It stings, makes his eyes water, and he looks over to his mother with confusion, “Wh--Wh--?”

“You’ve certainly grown, Gavin. Become such a mess. What the hell has gotten into you?” His mother’s eyes are no longer kind, her jaw set and lips drawn into a sneer, “Drugs? Alcohol? Sex? We raised you so much better than this.”

“What were you even thinking?” His father moves to grab his wrist instead, squeezes hard enough to hurt, “Ah, that’s right, you probably weren’t. Always a stupid, lazy boy.”

“Just a disappointment, really.”

Real tears prick the corners of Gavin’s eyes and he squirms as much as he can, tries to move away, tries to ask them what’s going on and why they’re hurting him. For a moment, he flounders, looking helplessly between them, but then his eyes land on his mother again and she doesn’t look right. Even without moving to displace them, huge clumps of hair are falling from her scalp, and her skin is discolored, growing tight and dry, sinking in, quickly beginning to--beginning to rot, he realizes, cold terror twisting in his gut.

His father isn’t faring any better and they’re still both so close to him, holding him tightly as their bodies decompose. Their skin is breaking up, sloughing away in chunks, revealing oozing black blood and cracked bone beneath it and he can smell the decay then, stifling and suffocating and choking him.

“Why didn’t you try harder? Maybe you could have done something to save us,” His mother’s jaw is almost entirely disconnected from the rest of her face by then, held together only by loose joints and scraps of brownish skin.

His father drops, knees cracking against the floor, and he ends up staring at Gavin over the edge of the bed with eyes sitting in rapidly emptying sockets. His grip on Gavin’s wrist doesn’t loosen. “What a fucking disappointment. You hear that, Gavin? You disappointed us.”

“You’re terrible. Worthless,” His mother’s voice is starting to grow raspier. She slumps, resting now almost entirely on his body as her dark, dark blood soaks into the blanket, “We always hated you, you know. Never wanted children. Why do you think we only had you?”

After a moment, his father begins to laugh, his own jaw hanging open as he stares and stares. His mother’s hand, dead and still decaying, falls from his hair to his cheek, “Oh, Gavin. You should have died that day on the docks. We wish you had.”

Gavin screams and screams until darkness finds him once more.

~

The Fake AH Crew rules Los Santos, anyone you ask could tell you that. They’re untouchable. Immortal. They’re good at what they do, good at planning, good at hurting, good at instilling fear. They execute plans perfectly, and even when they don’t, things end up turning out fine, anyway. They’re always there, always watching, always waiting, always ready to strike when they need to, and always one step ahead of the cops.

Even when one of them gets caught, the very few times it’s happened, they’ve escaped or been broken out very soon after. People talk, say that they have connections within the LSPD, connections within the hospitals, connections within the city officials.

People are right.

As a general rule, at least in context of the dark, seedy, not-quite-so-underbelly of Los Santos, you’re either with them or you’re dead. Small crews pop up from time to time, but they either quickly affiliate themselves with the Fake AH Crew, or they disappear. It’s as simple as that.

Such is the way of Los Santos.

Such is the way of the crew.

~

On November 12th at exactly 9:56 am, Burnie Burns receives the call.

Well, more like his assistant receives the call and then directs it to him, but that’s beside the point. He eventually receives it himself and that happens at exactly 9:56 am.

“Michael Burns speaking,” He leans one elbow against the desk, trying to figure out why the hell a hospital in Los Santos is calling him.

“Yes, hello, Mr. Burns? I’m sorry to interrupt you at this time, but are you at all related to someone by the name of Gavin Free?”

Burnie freezes, stomach dropping and fingers almost loosening enough for the phone to drop, as well. Gavin Free. 

Gavin Free.

His nephew. The boy who went missing four years ago, who he spent a year trying to track down, who had been pronounced dead just like his parents. The boy he was supposed to take care of, to protect. 

When Gavin’s parents died, Burnie hadn’t had the heart to fly to England and face their deaths. His older sister and his brother-in-law had meant too much to him and it was too damn soon. He couldn’t go. Of course, that left Gavin on his own when it came time to move to America. Alone on the flight. Alone when he was supposed to arrive.

Alone and soon dead, as well.

Except, wait, no, Gavin is alive, right? Why else would someone from the hospital be calling? Gavin is alive. Gavin is alive, not dead, he’s alive and he’s in the hospital, oh fuck, what the fuck, why is he in the damn hos--

“Mr. Burns? Are you still there?”

Burnie blinks twice and then clears his throat, suddenly flustered, “I’m sorry, yes, I’m here. And yes, I’m definitely related to Gavin. He’s my--my nephew.”

“Oh, good. You’re the only living relative we could find,” The nurse sounds relieved and Burnie thinks about his mother who died just six months ago. Indeed, he’s the only family Gavin has left.

He clears his throat again, more just to set himself back on track than anything, “Is he alright?”

The nurse hesitates, and Burnie’s blood runs cold, “Well… He’s alive, Mr. Burns, and he will most certainly survive. He’s in a bad shape, however. If you wouldn’t mind coming down to the hospital, a doctor can fill you in on the rest.”

Why the woman can’t just tell him now, Burnie has no clue, but he tells himself not to get frustrated about it and just nods, though she can’t see it, “Yeah, of course. No problem. I’ll--I can be there in an hour.”

“Alright, Mr. Burns, thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Burnie hangs up after that and nearly jumps from his chair, sliding his suit jacket off the back of it. He fills Chris in, very briefly, about where he’s going, asks the man to shut down his computer for him, and then leaves.

His heart is beating loud enough in his chest that he can hear it.

He makes a promise to himself that he will never, ever let Gavin down again.

~

“Here’s what we know, Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle sits beside Burnie in the waiting room, setting her clipboard in her lap. Before they let him see Gavin, he needs to know everything that’s wrong with him. He isn’t sure he can stomach the conversation. “Gavin was found in the water, by the docks in the southern part of the city. He had been shot in the shoulder, but he hadn’t been in the water very long, so no hypothermia. Just some water in his lungs, but we got that out. The surgery to remove the bullet went well.”

She pauses and Burnie frowns, “But?”

“The brachial plexus is a network of nerves that sends and receives signals from the brain to the arm. It’s located in the spine, but certain shoulder injuries can also affect it. In Gavin’s case, the bullet damaged it. He’s currently experiencing nerve damage and paralysis in his left arm, but, but,” she emphasized the last two words, seeing Burnie become upset by the news, “There’s no reason to suspect that it’s irreversible. Gavin isn’t in the right condition at the moment, but we can start him on physical therapy if it doesn’t go away, and he should regain almost all, if not all, of his feeling and movement in the arm.”

Burnie lets out a slow breath and nods, scrubbing at his face with one hand, “Okay… Okay. Alright. That’s--This is doable. This is okay. Gavin can work through that.”

“Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle begins delicately after a moment, “There’s more.”

“More? What more can there be than being shot in the shoulder?” Burnie tries to remind himself not to sound angry, because the doctor is just here to help, none of it is her fault, but he can’t keep the incredulous tone out of his voice no matter how hard he tries.

“There are injuries sustained possibly in some kind of fight before he was shot. He has a few bruised ribs and another is cracked, but that’s the most amount of damage there,” the doctor flips through the chart some, then continues, “As well as this, he… He had trace amounts of alcohol and various drugs in his system when he was brought in, and there are… Track marks on the insides of his arms, and other evidence of heavy drug use throughout his body that I can detail if you’d like.”

Burnie shakes his head minutely, but otherwise doesn’t respond from where he sits slumped over with his head in his hands.

With a soft sigh, she moves on, “The police conducted a rape kit once he got out of surgery. We believe that he has been having sex, but there was no evidence of injuries related specifically to fighting off an unwanted sexual encounter. Of course, that could be incorrect, but we’ll have to wait until he’s lucid enough to ask him, so for now, they’ve ruled out rape.”

Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. Violence.

Everything Los Santos stands for. It’s almost funny.

Almost.

“Is that it, then?” Burnie doesn’t know how much more he can handle. Everything that could have happened did, and the boy his sister trusted him to protect is now half-dead in a hospital bed because of him.

“The only other thing you should know is that he’s going through withdrawals from both the alcohol and drugs right now. There’s nothing we can do to aid him through this process except make sure he doesn’t hurt himself any further, and in your case, be there to comfort him. It’s mostly been a series of… Intense hallucinations, but he’s also been showing signs of anxiety, nausea, shaking, and sweating, as well. The few times he’s been lucid, he’s either quite irritable or has a hard time concentrating.”

Burnie thinks he might throw up soon, “How long will that last?”

“Because we don’t know exactly which drugs he was addicted to, we don’t know for sure,” Dr. Eberle offers him a small, apologetic smile, “But since it was probably multiple different ones, on top of the alcohol, I think it’s likely we’ll see lasting symptoms anywhere from two weeks to a month. 

“Now, we haven’t been able to give him very large doses of any painkillers because we’re afraid his body may latch onto them during this withdrawal period, but we’ve given him enough to help him get some rest, for the most part, so he isn’t aware of any pain most of the time. He might not be very responsive, either, for a while, but as the withdrawals begin to subside, he’ll be much more lucid.”

The information is almost too much to have gotten all at once, but Burnie is the CEO and founder of a big company. He’s used to things like this. Taking a moment to catalog it all, he finally looks up at the doctor and nods once, “At least he isn’t dead. Thank you for everything you’re doing for him.”

“Of course, Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle smiles again, sympathetically, and pats his shoulder, “If you’re ready, you can go see him. He should be asleep right now.”

Burnie breathes in slowly and then stands, schooling his features. Whether Gavin is awake or not, whether he’s even aware of his surroundings or not, Burnie has to be there for him. He has to be strong. He has to make him feel as if it’s okay.

He has no idea who Gavin is anymore, has no idea what he’s going to act like, what’s he been through, the type of person he’s become, but if nothing else, he has to let Gavin know that it’s okay.

“I’m ready.”


End file.
